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Facebook are Testing Self-destructing Status Updates

Given how Facebook’s news feed is generally found awash with
various forms of media ranging from a simple photo of your friends’ latest
holiday to a VR journey across the wastes of Jakku (as seen during the
marketing campaign for Star Wars: The Force Awakens), it is all too easy to
forget that when it first began, Facebook was primarily a platform on which to
post timely, text-based updates about your daily life, and share those
experiences with your network of friends. The Facebook of today is an entirely
different beast it seems, but the company do appear to be teasing a return to
the classic format at least in some small measure, as they have officially
confirmed that they are testing the introduction of self-destructing status
updates that will automatically delete themselves after a specified period of
time.

The feature was first spotted by a user who subsequently
shared a screenshot with BuzzFeed; the publication reached out to Facebook for
confirmation, and the company responded with the following:

“We’re testing an update that lets people set a temporary
status on their profile to let friends know what they’re doing or feeling in
the moment. People have the option to set an expiration date for the status and
choose whether or not it appears in News Feed or only on their profile.”

The temporary nature of the posts is certainly reminiscent
of the service offered by Snapchat, albeit with less of a visual nature, which
should come as no surprise given Facebook’s recent tendency to lift ideas from
competitor platforms in a bid to increase engagement and retention among users.
The text-only updates are also limited to a maximum of 101 characters,
seemingly stepping onto the turf of popular micro-blogging platform Twitter.

The thing is, Facebook can hardly hope to topple Snapchat in
the realm of ephemeral sharing, a game that Snap Inc. seem to have long since
perfected. Nor are they likely to achieve much success by emulating the
features of Twitter; the two platforms have long survived side-by-side since
the dawning days of social media’s popularity, and users clearly expect a
different service from each.

Criticism aside, I do see how the feature could be useful
particularly among younger users, many of whom have fallen victim to the
downsides of social media when, for example, expletive-ridden rants posted in
their teens rear up during a job application process and prevent them from
securing the position. By allowing users to post temporary updates, this element
of permanence is removed. Of course other users could still take a screenshot
of the message, but this is far less likely to happen.

This new feature could also serve to de-clutter users’ news
feeds, bringing Facebook back in line with the more personal,
friendship-orientated service it first began life as. I have many friends,
family and acquaintances myself who have stepped back from the platform in
recent times as they have become increasingly frustrated with the sheer amount
of irrelevant content and sponsored ads which permeate the feed, and they would
likely appreciate a return to a more simplified service.

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